Company to release latest beta of Exchange 2007, detail unified communications capabilities.
With new versions of its flagship products still entrenched in development, Microsoft opens its annual TechEd conference this week with a focus on selling IT on the benefits of migrating to the new software.
With new versions of its flagship products still entrenched in development, Microsoft opens its annual TechEd conference in Boston this week with a focus on selling IT on the benefits of migrating to the new software.
The show won’t be devoid of news or new products. The company is expected to release the latest beta of Exchange 2007 and detail its unified communications capabilities as part of the company’s focus in that area. Earlier this year, Microsoft merged its Exchange and Real-time Collaboration groups to form the Unified Communications Group.
Microsoft will hand out evaluation versions of its newly completed Compute Cluster Edition of Windows for high-performance computing, and a beta of the WinFS file system, which is expected to ship next year. In addition, the company this week is expected to ship Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 and update its Common Engineering Criteria, which provides a blueprint for developing, securing, managing, certifying and licensing infrastructure servers.
The conference features a keynote address from Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s CTO, who is charged with defining the company’s Windows Live services strategy. He is scheduled to talk about new technologies, including Vista and Longhorn.
“Microsoft has got to get out and evangelize and sell the benefits of the new products but more important, the benefits of the cross-integration of features among those products and why customers and partners should get on board and get moving to new versions,” says Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research.
The integration includes the forthcoming Vista and Office 2007 and, late next year, Longhorn Server.
“Ozzie has a tough job,” Wilcox says. “He is the man in some ways charged with reinventing Microsoft, and that is a tough task, because of the corporate culture there.”
Ozzie might use his background as inventor of Lotus Notes to help explain the latest reincarnation of the Exchange strategy. The company is expected to hand out the latest beta of Exchange, but it is unclear if that will be the DF4 (DogFood 4) release sent to private beta testers on May 26 or the official Beta 2 release slated for this summer.
Regardless, beta testers say administrators are in for a learning curve with the new version of Exchange. “Administrators have a very large set of new capabilities in Exchange 2007 that they’ll need to understand how to deploy, optimize and manage,” says one tester who requested anonymity. Exchange 2007 can be deployed in five roles: mailbox, client access, edge, bridgehead and unified messaging. “You have way more complexity now with five roles, five possible server locations and multiple models for supporting high-availability features,” said the tester.
Microsoft has planned nearly 70 sessions on Exchange, and Dave Thompson, the corporate vice president for Exchange, will deliver a strategic briefing on Exchange’s unified communication features.
The Exchange beta CD given away at TechEd is expected to have the beta wrapped inside a copy of Microsoft’s Virtual Server software.
The conference is expected to attract 11,000 attendees. There will be 240 exhibitors and more than 950 sessions, chalk talks, birds-of-a-feather gatherings and hands-on labs.
